Proteas Origins: Gary Kirsten

Gary Kirsten had to find his own path and create his own legacy.

Gary Kirsten had to find his way from under the shadows of his talented brother and respected father to carve his own legacy in the sport that was a part of their family.

When he looked at the team sheet and saw his name at the top, Gary Kirsten was a little unsure. He had never opened the batting before, he had spent his life practicing to be a middle order batter, not an opener. But, this was his opportunity, and there’s a first time for everything, right?

He remembers it in technicolor, it was a big moment, a turning point.

If only he could remember the event around his first bat just as well. He wishes he did. He winces, but not in pain, just the way you would when you are trying to reach for something that is just out of reach. You can see that he is making an attempt to retrieve the details from some sort of mental archive, as he sits on the other side.

He is going through the possibilities, maybe his first bat was a hand-me-down from Peter, who had turned professional by the time Gary was old enough to own a bat of his own. Peter had one of the best collections of bats that young Gary had ever seen. Mind you, Gary grew up around cricketers, his father was also a keen cricketer and had played for Border until 1961. Maybe his father had bought it for him, that was the other possibility.

Then he smiles. He has remembered something. But, even then, he is not too sure. There is a lingering sense of doubt, but he is more sure than he is doubtful.

“I would take it at a guess that my first bat was a Double Scoop Gray Nicolls,” he says with nostalgic fondness.

It’s a really good shout, the Double Scoop or the Twin Scoops was a very popular bat back in the day, picking up on the success of the Scoop. There seemed to have been a time when everyone’s grandfather, father, uncle and brother owned a Scoop or a Twin Scoop. It was described as that one bat that every kid wanted for Christmas. It went into production when he was around 8 years old, about four years after he had started to take an interest in cricket. The Scoop was a ‘colorful’, bold innovation that challenged convention. It was not what most bats of the time looked and felt like. It was the bat of the player who carved their own path in the world, sort of like what Gary Kirsten was intent on doing.

“My surname represented my older brother as a professional cricketer. There was a school of thought that said, ‘Well, it's natural he's going to follow in his footsteps,’” says Gary.

And Gary had a bit of an issue with that as a youngster, not only were they very different people, they were also very different players. The fact that Peter was immensely talented, a player ahead of his time with his solid technique and attacking stroke play, didn’t help matters much.

“I wasn't as talented as he was, by any stretch,” he laughs.

This is a fact that Gary has always been consistent on. He has always felt that he could never compete with Peter’s abilities as a cricketer. If there is one person whom he has always emulated, it is Peter, his achievements have always been a source of inspiration for him. But, there was one area where Gary was better than Peter: tennis. Peter was miles behind Gary when it came to tennis.

Where Peter was a better allrounder on the cricket field - Gary only got into bowling off-spin because he also “wanted to do something as well” - Gary was the better talented all-round sportsperson. Throughout his school years he played four sports; cricket, rugby, tennis and squash. He could have pursued a career in tennis, had he taken it as seriously as he did cricket.

Of course, this is not to suggest that he was not talented in cricket, after-all, he did captain the South African schools team. He just had to work a little harder to reach Peter’s level.

“Because I didn’t have Peter’s talent, I had to work it out my way, to work out what my way was. I think it helped me because it gave me a resilience and determination to say, ‘I can do equally well in this game, but I am going to do it my way.’”

It is possible that this could have added to Gary’s uncertainty about his future. If he was going to carve a legacy of his own, outside the shadow of his brother, he was going to have to either take a different path or walk the same path differently.

“When I left school I was kind of floundering a bit in my life,” he says. “I didn't know which way I was going to go.”

Had it not been for Duncan Fletcher, his coach at the University of Cape Town, it is possible that he might have chosen a different path. Gary Kirsten was also a keen rugby player, had played provincial Under-20 rugby - and he played his last competitive rugby match in the same year that he was called up to the South Africa national team.

Anyway, besides rugby, there are many other paths that he could have followed; he was young, he had his whole life ahead of him. Fletcher taking a real interest in him and developing a bond that grew beyond that of coach and player provided a turning point in his life.

“He really became a real father figure for me,” says Gary. “That was a massive thing for me in my cricket career, it really helped me.”

Of course, it was not all bad. Growing in the shadow of a supremely talented older sibling, who had all the makings of a future great had its own advantages. Gary, who took to cricket very early on, at 4 years of age, had a ready and willing training partner from the word go. The 13-year age difference between the siblings also meant that he also had a very good reference point to work from.

Sports psychologists say that older siblings provide a solid platform for the development of technical and psychological skills to their younger siblings. They also provide them with role models to emulate - everything from work ethic to other non-sport activities. This helps model and develop character traits that can help them as athletes.

Of course, doing as well as his older brother was not enough. It is never enough for younger siblings. Very few just want to be as good as the template before them. This is probably why more younger siblings make it big in sports compared to only children or older siblings. They are not driven to just be good, they are also driven to win, to be better. As far as Gary was concerned, Peter set the benchmarks, and it was his goal to meet and surpass them.

“I always used to say to him, ‘Hey, Kirzy, how many double hundreds did you get in First Class cricket?’ And he said 8. And I said, ‘Okay, my goal is to get 9,’” Gary smiles.

In the end, Gary managed as many double hundreds as Peter. Both ended up with eight. They kind of evened it out.

There is something else that skill development experts say, they say that younger siblings enjoy a lot of time of informal practice, compared to their older siblings who are often closely monitored by parents. And this is true for Gary Kirsten who admits that informal sports playing was a part of their childhood.

“I grew up in a family that was sport mad, sport was in our DNA,” he says, “and we were fortunate to have access to sport. Which a lot of children in our country don't have. I think having access to sport is an incredible privilege. By access, I mean, getting formal and informal access to sport. Our informal access was space - a field that you can go to play cricket on, kick a rugby ball, go play tennis. We had access to space and facilities, which was massive.”

Access to informal play, in addition to their drive to win, makes them better resilient and adaptable athletes. It is this resilience and determination that Gary developed in his early years probably contributed to his ability to transform from being a middle order batter to an opening batter.

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After breezing through club cricket and making the shift to Western Province’s side seamlessly, Gary found himself struggling to break into the Western Province A side. He was stuck on the sidelines, and his coach, Robin Jackman, felt that Gary was too good a player to have on the sidelines.

"Have you ever considered opening the batting?" Jackman asked him one day.

The question took Gary by surprise, he had never opened the batting. And he told Jackman as much.

"Just think about it and let me know, because whenever an opportunity arrives I'll think about you to open the batting," responded the coach, who seemed to have made up his mind about the young player.

It happened two games later. Just like that, he had to transform from being a middle order batter into an opener, with no preparation.

“It was quite daunting, because I didn't think I could face the new ball,” says Gary.

But, as it turned out, Robin Jackman had been right, Gary could make a good opener. He managed scores of 11 and 80 in his first ever outing as an opener in First Class cricket. His fate was sealed. A few years later when the South African selectors picked him for the tour to Australia, they were picking an opening batter, not a middle order batter.

But, his debut didn’t exactly go according to plan - he was dismissed for 16 runs and rain prevented him from batting again. The match was drawn. In the second Test, the New Year’s Day Test, in Sydney, Gary properly announced himself to the world, scoring 108 runs in his two innings.

But it was the third Test, the Adelaide Test, that was the big moment on the tour. In fact, it was the third Test that really felt like Gary’s debut. Crossing the boundary rope to take the field against Australia beside his older brother, Peter, it felt as if his career had been building up to this moment. This is something that they had talked about.

Two brothers can dream, right? Gary and Peter had dared to dream about this moment even when it didn’t look like it was going to happen. They believed in each other enough to be convinced that it would happen. They brothers had walked a long road together, reaching this point is what they had always wanted. Their father would have been very happy, his heart would have swelled with pride: his sons playing together for South Africa.

“It was fantastic, it was an emotional moment, really,” says Gary. “With my father not being there, we thought a lot about him. He was very instrumental in both our careers.”

It was a perfect tribute to Noel Kirsten.

Peter was 39 years old and Gary was 26, one was at the back end of his career while the other’s career was just starting. In a sense, it felt as if one Kirsten was handing over the mantle to the younger one. Peter was officially introducing the world to his younger sibling. It was time for another legacy to take root, one centered on Gary.

Of course, they went on to enjoy another couple of years playing for South Africa together, but this moment felt as the moment Gary got to be his own man in the sport, no longer under the shadow of his older brother. He had made it in his own way, found his own path to the top, and had to move on alone.

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